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In Home Health and Day Care Industries;
Catholic Charities USA Will Assist
WASHINGTON (October 2, 1998) - The Catholic Campaign For Human Development (CCHD) and the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) today announced their first-ever joint effort, a welfare-to-work project. The five-year, $2.5 million Job Creation Initiative will create new, sustainable jobs for low-income people in the home health and day care industries, while providing better wages and benefits than are typical in the field and offering opportunities for worker ownership of the businesses.
The initiative is being launched in close collaboration with Catholic Charities USA. "Our three groups already share a common foundation in the faith, social mission and teaching of the Catholic Church," said CCHD Executive Director Rev. Robert J. Vitillo. "This collaboration will help us utilize our respective and considerable institutional strengths for the good of poor people living in our society."
"We look forward to using the expertise and community relationships established by our 1200 member facilities and organizations to help replicate successful CCHD job creation projects on a larger scale," said CHA President and Chief Executive Officer Rev. Michael D. Place, STD.
Since 1985, CCHD-funded home care and child care groups in New York, Boston and Philadelphia have successfully given low-income people the skills to perform needed jobs in their communities. Most employees are former public assistance recipients who are now worker-owners earning competitive salaries. In these employee-owned companies, job turnover is lower than the industry average and the quality of service delivered is higher.
"This collaboration is an obvious one for the sponsoring organizations," said Fr. Vitillo. "We at CCHD have substantial experience in developing job creation enterprises for the poor, while the CHA members have unparalleled expertise in the delivery of health care services."
Over its five-year span, the new initiative will raise and allocate $2.5 million to establish eight new employee-owned day care and home health care businesses employing more than 500 people. An initial $500,000 grant has been made to the initiative from the CCHD's Msgr. Geno Baroni Fund and will be used for technical assistance and start-up costs for local projects, as well as for support of the coordination activities of the initiative. A grant of $50,000 in support of the effort has also been made anonymously by a private Catholic foundation.
Already, the joint initiative has been recognized by the Vatican's Pontifical Council Cor Unum as one of the Holy Father's "100 Plus Projects" in connection with the Church's 1999 Year of Charity. According to Cor Unum, designated projects "serve in fostering the two-fold reality of charity through solidarity and assistance, both spiritual and material, directed toward human needs, development and progress which unites Christians and like-minded people of goodwill, as well as serving as an example to highlight those in need as the world embarks on the Third Millennium."
Founded by the Catholic Bishops of the United States in 1970, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is the nation's largest private funder of projects that empower the poor and work to eliminate poverty and injustice in the U.S. In the last 28 years, CCHD has distributed nearly $250 million in grants to more than 3500 self-help projects nationwide. The St. Louis-based Catholic Health Association of the United States is the national leadership organization for Catholic-sponsored facilities and organizations. Its members comprise the nation's largest group of not-for-profit health care facilities under a single form of sponsorship. Catholic Charities USA is the nation's largest network of people helping people. The 1400 local agencies and institutions provide services across the country to more than 12 million people a year -- regardless of their religious, ethnic, racial, or social background.